Affirming the importance of social media to small businesses and small business card issuers, Discover’s recent Small Business Watch survey shows both the personal growth in usage, as well as a gap for business use:
In polls conducted in April and October of this year, the percentage of small business owners who are members of an online social networking community increased from 48 percent to 59 percent. But only 29 percent of all small businesses
said last month that they have ever used social networking websites to promote their businesses.
Social networking sites are just one element of a small business owner’s online activities, which are continuing to evolve:
Discover’s polls also show that 76 percent of small business owners are spending more than an hour online every week related to their businesses, up from 66 percent in October 2007. Looking closer at the numbers, the percentage of owners who were spending more than seven hours a week online for business reasons actually dropped from 26 percent to 20 percent in three years, but the percentage of those working from three to seven hours per week climbed from 19 percent in 2007 to 33 percent in 2010.
See the original press release at:
